It was almost a year ago when the remains of Ronnie Gibbons were exhumed.

There have been no arrests in the case – Gibbons was surely murdered – but the investigation continues.

Like the police, I’ve tried to piece together just how Ronnie Gibbons may have been slain. What follows is, I’ll admit here, far from certainty. Instead, it’s a scenario constructed from the evidence I know, the interviews I’ve done, and the information police have shared (which surely is not the entirety of their proof).

As readers of the blog know, Gibbons went missing from Rochester in August 1995. I won’t rehash the details – or the likely reasons – but you can find that in the earlier coverage linked here.

For that fateful trip, Gibbons traveled alone. Hindsight being what it is, we know this was not a wise decision. But this was not the first time he drove here in an unsuccessful bid to get his hands on some of the missing Brinks millions. Only weeks before, he traveled to Rochester with friends – one of them a former boxer like Gibbons – to approach some of the people he believed had access to the cash. While I don’t know the full details of that trip, I can say that Gibbons was unsuccessful.

When Gibbons returned to Rochester alone, he’d jotted down on a newspaper the phone numbers of local residents whom he apparently planned to see. He also had written a monetary number that may have been the amount he hoped to get his hands on in Rochester. According to friends who found his car – and the newspaper – the amount was between $100,000 and $250,000.

As we’ve reported, Gibbons was last publicly seen at the Applebee’s in Greece, getting into a car with someone he met in the parking lot there. It’s not a leap to assume that the individual – still unidentified – knows how Gibbons died.

Of course, the details from the moment he left the parking lot are sparse and the conclusions that can be drawn from them subjective. But the fact that his remains washed ashore in Cape Vincent, NY, at the juncture of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, helps reconstruct his death.

The remains that were discovered – a foot and a torso – could not answer how Gibbons was killed. However, there were no signs of torture. It’s likely that whoever killed Gibbons shot him in the head or strangled him. If ever his head is discovered - a grisly possibility, I know – then that question may be resolved.

It’s also likely that Gibbons was weighted down when his body was dumped in the waters at Cape Vincent. (I’ll forewarn: Another grisly possibility is next.) The waters, coupled with the weights, may well have caused the separation of the body. Given that likelihood, it is not out of the question that more remains will one day be discovered.

When police first learned that Gibbons remains were found in Cape Vincent – and not buried somewhere in the Rochester region as long suspected – an early assumption was that his murdered body had been transported there by boat. During the investigation into the Brinks robbery, one person questioned by police – but not a suspect in the robbery – frequently sailed Lake Ontario with friends, including local lawyers and businesspeople. Many of his friends also had boats. Perhaps, some suspected, one of the boats was used to move Gibbons’ corpse.

However, a Cape Vincent resident – now deceased – had close contacts with some of the same people whom Gibbons likely came to see in Rochester. And Gibbons’ remains were found near the waterfront cottage where the man lived. It may well be that Gibbons was murdered, driven to Cape Vincent, weighted and tossed in the water there. Police have also looked into questions of whether a stolen car was used for the transport of the corpse.

As you can tell, there are more questions here than answers – and I again do not deny that this scenario includes speculation. But the speculation is grounded in evidence.

What’s encouraging is that only a year after Gibbons’ remains were exhumed, enough evidence has been amassed to at least attempt informed speculation. The police say they’re continuing to push ahead.

Perhaps firm answers are to come.

(To read the initial coverage of the discovery of Ronnie Gibbons’ remains, click here. To subscribe to notifications of this continuing narrative blog, click here. Notifications will also be sent via my Twitter account @gcraig1. )

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Gary Craig was previously a reporter with the now-defunct Rochester Times-Union, where he covered City Hall and politics. His focus for much of the past decade has been on criminal justice issues. He has won regional, state and national journalism awards, including honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Headliners Awards. His career has taken him to prison riots, national political conventions, and the cockpit of a biplane flying upside down over the Chesapeake Bay. Few of those moments were as memorable as one of his early days at his first newspaper, the Farmville (Va) Herald, a day in which he covered both a chicken house fire and the birth of twin calves. He and his wife, Charlotte, live in Brighton and are the parents of two daughters, neither of whom showed the least bit of interest in journalism as a career.

Sean Lahman is the Democrat and Chronicle’s database specialist. Prior to joining the staff, he was a reporter with the New York Sun, and served as an editor of a number of best-selling sports encyclopedias – including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. Lahman’s 2008 book, The Pro Football Historical Abstract, was called "the best football book of the decade" by the Pro Football Researchers Association. He is perhaps best known for creating the popular Lahman Baseball database, an open source collection of baseball statistics. Lahman attended the University of Cincinnati and lives in Irondequoit. In lieu of hobbies, he has three teenage kids.

Meaghan McDermott has been with the Democrat and Chronicle since 1998, and has come close to reaching her one-time goal of being assigned as a beat reporter to cover each of Monroe County's suburban towns and villages.
Since 2006, her focus has been on the Town of Greece and the Greece Central School District. Her work there, including reporting on financial waste and abuse in an early 2000s schools construction project and corruption in the Greece Police Department, has been recognized with state journalism awards. Over the years, she's also looked into topics such as into the safety conditions of local roadway bridges, school superintendent salaries and perks, teacher pay, teacher discipline, town and village employee pay and overtime and how a spree killer ended up with a pistol permit despite his prior arrests.

Dick Moss is investigations editor at the Democrat and Chronicle and his duties include guiding the public service investigations team. Moss has bounced around among half a dozen editing jobs at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1987, when he started in Rochester as a copy editor. His longest stint was as the newsroom's copy desk chief from 1996 to 2005. He is a 1980 graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. -- where he studied under muckraking journalist Clark Mollenhoff -- and worked as a reporter and editor at several smaller newspapers in Virginia and New York state before joining the Democrat and Chronicle. His academic degrees include a diploma from the Beehive Kindergarten in Flushing, N.Y., that claims he plays well with others. "The sandbox was my favorite playtime activity," Moss says. "I've enjoyed digging in the dirt ever since."

Steve Orr has been a reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1981, and has covered a wide variety of local topics. Over the years he also has looked into, among other things, chemical contamination at the former Kodak Park, sewer tunnel construction snafus, airport construction issues, baseball-stadium construction problems, the troubled life of a man accused of impregnating a comatose nursing home patient, the troubled life and death of a suspected serial killer, railroad crossing safety, the death of a troubled loner while under government care, suburban development trends, crime trends, a suburban property scam, an rigged appraisal-assessment scam, and a scam to cheat institutions out of millions of dollars in nickels, dimes and quarters. He originated the newspaper's computer and Internet column and wrote it weekly for a decade, and also is a former weather and climate columnist. At present Orr focuses on environmental issues. Contact: E-mail | Phone (585) 258-2386 | Twitter.com/SOrr1 | Facebook.com/SteveOrrROC

David Riley joined the Democrat and Chronicle’s watchdog team in 2013. An upstate New York native, he has worked as a journalist for a decade from the Hudson Valley to Greater Boston. Most recently, he was a regional reporter and editor for GateHouse Media in eastern Massachusetts, where he focused on data-driven reporting and wrote stories about everything from state government to the Boston Marathon bombing. He has won regional journalism awards for his coverage of police cameras that scan license plates, river pollution and rapid development in a small town, among other topics. In pursuit of stories over the years, he has attempted to shoot video while riding a bike, fled swarming bees and has been asked to leave numerous parking lots. A SUNY Albany graduate, he lives in Rochester with his wife.